Sweet Sydney spitters

Here's why I love spitters today. I emailed a link to some photos of street art around Enmore/Newtown that I had taken to my fave creative mag Spitpress because I thought they'd enjoy the celebration of all things creative on our streets. Apparently they did. Then they went to the trouble of making my note into a blog post in which they said really nice things about me, and even gave a little plug for my book. I've only been promoting Airmail properly for a week, so that made the Spitpress mention my first mention. Extra special.

Best of all, they called me a Dynamo. A Dynamo! We will be friends forever.

Author + actor collaboration

Writers and actors have a long history of working together, but usually it is the writers who provide the foundation for the actors to create their art. In my case, it was the other way around. In the early stages of writing Airmail, I struggled to write the character of the old man, Mr GL Solomon. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get inside his head and he just wasn’t coming across as authentic.

And as a woman in her early 30s, I had no reference points: both of my grandfathers had passed away, and there was a distinct lack of old men in my life from whom to draw inspiration.

I couldn’t answer the question: if a reclusive old man started receiving letters from a complete stranger, and if the letters were from a young woman who lived on the other side of the world, and if that world played fast and loose with reality… how would he react? Would he be dismissive? Afraid? Angry? Compassionate? I tried all of the above, and I just couldn’t get him right.

Enter: the actor.

My actor-friend’s name is Adrian and I’d love to give you more and encourage you to go out and see ANYTHING he’s in, because he’s brilliant. But we’ve lost touch so without permission I won’t be revealing his identity, sadly.

Anyhow, Adrian was studying at NIDA at the time, and he offered to workshop the character of the old man for me. Here’s how it happened.

Step 1: I gave Adrian a brief overview of the old man. His name is GL Solomon, and nobody uses his first name. I told Adrian he could create a name if he needed to. He lives alone. He is in his late 70s. He hates cats. He also hates processed cheese, and the way the teacup rattles in the saucer when he picks it up. He loves reading fishing magazines but never goes fishing. He is driven by routine and order. Stuff like that.

Step 2: Over the next few months, I hand-wrote letters from the girl, Anouk. I stuck old NYC ticket stubs in them from the last time I’d visited, I threw in mementos like old USA pennies and used-up metro cards and branded napkins. I put each letter in an airmail envelope, stuck used USA stamps on the outside, and dropped them in Adrian’s letterbox when I knew he wasn’t home.

Step 3: Each time he got a letter Adrian, in the character of the old man, would read it. Later, he’d let me know what the old man thought of it, how he reacted, and how it impacted the way he went about his daily life and routine. His first piece of feedback was, “the old man finds it very difficult to read her handwriting,” so Anouk conveniently borrowed her landlady’s antique typewriter to continue her epistles.

Together, Adrian and I developed the wonderful, gruff, curmudgeonly old man who is GL Solomon in the book. Reading Airmail, you’ll see I’ve used a Dickensian technique of never telling you how the old man is feeling: you'll seldom read “the old man thought this” or “the old man felt that.” Instead, this comes out in his behaviour and his external environment. For example, you know something’s up when he breaks routine.

It's what actors do on the stage, of course, and in Airmail I think this works and I hope you agree. It makes a good contrast to Anouk, who barely stops telling you what she's thinking and feeling. This all happened around 2003/4, and I still think Mr GL is one of the loveliest, best drawn, most complex and restrained characters I have ever written. Probably because I didn’t write him, Adrian became him.

Thanks Adrian, wherever you are!

Artists among us

Tribute to the street artists of Enmore and Newtown, who make ducking out to get milk an adventure in a living gallery.

Notting Hill blue

I'm getting married in two weeks. It's only a small wedding, and we're having the ceremony in our tiny back yard, which will be crowded and comedic to say the least. But my wonderful parents have been hard at work making it look like a paradise, and I humbly think it does. So does Ruby the cat.

Their latest idea was to paint the back door. Mum suggested a rust red, but Mr B was adamant: 'Notting Hill blue' was his choice. Remember the bright blue door in the movie Notting Hill? That colour.

(This is my dad painting the door earlier today, just before it rained. Get that blue!)

Possibly I forgot to mention I am marrying a little old lady. To whit:

* Notting Hill is Mr B's favourite movie * He is also fond of The Vicar of Dibley and anything with Penelope Keith in it * We have an Amish patchwork quilt on our bed * He enjoys drinking tea out of fine, floral china teacups, and * Is constantly on the lookout in antique stores for a really nice silver tea set.

Moreover, he is inordinately interested in the antics of the British royal family, past and present. I tender in evidence Exhibit A below, a very beautiful ring he gave me a couple of Christmases ago. I absolutely love it. But does it look familiar?

However, our love affair works because I am a little old lady too. I like all of these things (except the royal family, who leave me yawning I confess), PLUS I have gender on my side. And age, since I'm a year older than he is.

It's one thing to look forward to growing old together. Even better to already be old inside our heads, and have decades of mutual senility to enjoy ahead of us.

A match made in Shady Pines (or Portobello Rd).

Well hello, burgeoning addiction

Life lessons from antique Girls' Own annuals

How to make your home beautiful: Many women who are keenly anxious to dwell in beautiful surroundings, but who are unable to spend much on refurnishing, seem quite unconscious of the large part played by 'order' and 'suitability' in the making of a beautiful home. But order must not be confused with finicking tidiness; it is something far bigger and more dignified than this...

A woman's right to her own income:

Taxing a Woman's Marriage: An Article for Married Women with Incomes of Their Own, which tells of some Anomalies lately brought to Light, and How the Income of Husband and Wife is made to Bear Burdens Jointly that could not be Imposed Separately...

Curried tripe recipe:

Slice two large onions and fry them a light brown colour in two tablespoonfuls of dripping. Stir into the pan one teaspoon of curry powder, one table spoon of flour and three-quarters of a pint of stock...

Ladylike passion:

"We'll never let this house go, Uncle Tuck, never!" said Rose Mary passionately, as she pressed her cheek closer to his arm. "I don't know why I know, but we are going to have it as long as they - and you, you need it - and I'm going to die here myself," she added with a laughing sob, as she shook two tears out of her lashes and looked up at him with adorning stars in her eyes.

Speech therapy:

Paula brightened and did her best to look intelligent. "Bai Jove, yes wather, thanks, thanks," she said. "The air - why of course. I can't think why I couldn't wecall that fact before! But I've a tewwible bwain for poetwy, Miss Wedgwave, yes wather. Deplowa-"

"Yes, yes, Paula," Miss Redgrave cut in dryly. "I have already had ample opportunity to notice that fact."

Literary gold!

Made in Iceland

I've been editing a blog lately for a girl in Iceland. She mostly writes about travel, food, and family life at home, so you can imagine how enjoyable this 'work' is for me to read. The girl has a beautiful, carefree voice in her writing and, in between the funny stories, I get glimpses of her life that go beyond superficial culture and into what I guess, for want of a better way to describe it, is her cultural heart.

This girl is so very English in many ways, but occasionally something utterly Icelandic slips through in a manner of expressing herself, or in the way she responds to certain situations. I love it.

Then last week I came across this wonderful video by Austrian photographer and cinematographer Klara Harden, who spent 25 days trekking across Iceland alone. It is glorious and beautiful and invigorating, and sometimes harsh. Watching this, I felt both her freedom and her isolation, but most of all her elation. I also wanted to dig out my old hiking boots.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/31158028 w=525&h=295]

MADE IN ICELAND from Klara Harden on Vimeo.

There is something in the lonely wilderness of this mini-documentary that smacks of the freedom and romance-meets-brutal-practicality that comes through in the blog I have been editing.

And it makes me wonder, not for the first time, just how much our physical environment influences the truth of who we are. And more: what does that mean if, like me, you are a child (or grandchild) of immigrants, and you continue shifting landscapes across countries and even across hemispheres throughout your life? Where is the land of my soul?

All photographs from Klara Harden's Facebook page, used with permission.